It is not — and, in fact, that warming may be playing a role in this year's relentlesscold and snow, according to climate scientists.

"The story is so much bigger than just, 'cold around here,'" said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University who has been studying how melting arctic ice may be contributing to persistent weather systems across the Northern Hemisphere, including this year's oppressively frigid conditions.

While it might seem bizarre to Americans living east of the Rockies, the average temperature globally over land and sea for January 2014 was the highest since 2007 and the fourth-highest for any January since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It also marked almost 29 years with a global temperature above the 20th-century average, according to a monthly report released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

So as the Midwest and East Coast were being walloped by the cold, most of the world experienced higher-than-average monthly temperatures, with parts of South America and Africa racking up record warmth.

The trend is consistent with climate change models, which suggest that the world, in general, will become warmer and wetter in the future.

"We're kind of outliers in terms of what happened across the globe in January," NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch said.

Chicago's extended cold this winter is itself a historic oddity. From Dec. 1 through Feb. 26, the average temperature was 18.9, marking the third-lowest average winter temperature on record.

In terms of extreme cold, which NOAA pegs at minus 15 or lower in the Chicago area, the season has also been unusually bitter compared with recent years. Still, temperatures have not been as severe as winters in the 20th century.

O'Hare International Airport, for example, recorded 16 below zero on Jan. 6, a low reached only one other time in the past 14 years, when O'Hare recorded 18 below zero on Jan. 16, 2009. In the '60s, '70s, '80s and '90s, however, it was not that uncommon to have multiple days drop to minus 15 or lower over the course of a winter, according to NOAA data.

Since extreme cold outbreaks have become less common, when they do happen they seem more intense, Crouch said.

"It is more of a perception issue," he said.

That Chicago is now slogging through its fifth-snowiest winter on record is also not entirely surprising, according to climate change models that have predicted that winter and spring precipitation will increase over time.

"We don't expect our winters to get any less snowy for a long time," said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the climate science center at Texas Tech University and lead author of a 2010 paper assessing the effects of climate change on Chicago and the Great Lakes.

Hayhoe likened climate change being described as "global warming" to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. In that story, the men touch different portions of the animal to understand what it is and come away in complete disagreement.

"We have a global issue that each one of us is experiencing differently at the local level where we live," she said. "Global warming is a symptom of climate change, but for most of us, global warming — the warming of the entire planet — is not the symptom we see. The symptom we see is often more like weather weirding."

For some areas of the world, that may mean a future marked by more rain or stronger hurricanes, while others may become hotter and drier.

NOAA scientists are evaluating whether climate change had anything to do with the late fall tornadoes that tore through Illinois and the Midwest last year.

Although climate models predict an increase in temperatures and moisture, which could lead to more late-season tornadoes, they also predict a decrease in wind shear, Crouch said.

"The climate models are kind of mixed on this," he said.

Scientists also have been exploring to what extent climate change may be involved in the arctic air outbreaks buffeting the U.S.

Unusually warm conditions in the North Pacific helped give rise this fall to a massive dome of mild air over western North America. Acting like a chute, that ridge has hurtled bitter blasts into the Chicago area since about November, sending temperatures plunging this year. The pattern is, in part, due to a cyclical warming in the North Pacific, which in some places has measured 6 degrees above normal, according to meteorologists.

But Francis, the scientist at Rutgers, has also been researching whether the melting arctic ice might be allowing weather patterns to become more entrenched throughout the season.

The jet stream is a belt of wind that circles the globe, driven by the temperature differences between the poles and middle latitudes. Francis is studying whether the warming arctic region has allowed the jet stream to become wavier and slower, swinging farther south and north and locking in specific weather patterns, including last year's mild Midwest winter and this year's polar punches.

"Our results suggest that we are going to have more persistent weather patterns," Francis said. "Could be cold hanging out for a long time, or warm hanging out for a long time, or rainy or dry. It depends."